In the midst of all the MacWorld Expo excitement today, Connectix released "Virtual Game Station," a Sony PlayStation emulator for the Macintosh. This software will run on G3-based Macintosh computers and is already certified to run a long list of available titles.

The Virtual Game Station has fully-customizable support for many input devices, including keyboard, mouse, and joystick. Each action and function can be assigned by the user providing endless configuration options to make game play smoother.

Connectix Quality Assurance, a team of gamers using factory standard iMacs with 32 megabytes of RAM and Virutal Memory disabled, were tasked with testing countless titles on the new software. They have certifed over 100 games for use with Virtual Game Station, including Final Fantasty VII, Grand Theft Auto, Riven, NBA Shootout 98, and Air Combat, just to name a few.

More information, including a full list of certified titles, is available from Connectix's Virtual Game Station web page.

The Mac Observer: This makes a major step into the Macintosh gaming market, allowing people to enjoy one more platform's worth of entertainment on their trusty Mac. It also changes the perspective on all of the shareware/prerelease arcade emulators out there, and opens up that door for more of these people to polish their products and step forward. Perhaps now, instead of seeing game manufacturers threatening lawsuits and shutting down emulation-based websites, this will help spawn a commercial effort to make more software like this available to the Macintosh gaming public -- something that could benefit everyone involved.